I know that talking about time passing is about as interesting as telling someone about your dreams, but sometimes I get a shock when I see the dates on my software. I mean, I know I created JujuScript a while ago, but 2001…? [JujuScript itself was actually created at the end of 2000 – the calculator was written a month or so later ]

Slow-moving Fads

The funny thing is, one of the reasons I cooled a bit on the development of JujuScript [apart from the fact that there wasn’t a particular need for it] was that I simply assumed that Microsoft’s new script-like language C# would become ubiquitous within a year of its introduction.

And yet… It’s now 2004 and I am just one of many programmers still happily using VC++ 6.0 as my primary development environment, and VC6 must be 6 or 7 years old now. Most people I know who are using .NET are using it grudgingly, because a particular project [or manager] requires it. Joel [on Software] makes a good point that developing simple .NET applications is a real drag at the moment because they will only run when the 22MB runtime is installed (and up to date).

Only now am I beginning to understand that New Tech doesn’t catch on quite so fast these days. Even Microsoft has to be patient now, and can’t just expect everyone to change the way they do things overnight. I guess that’s why subscription/service models are becoming popular [with vendors]. If people already have software that does everything they want, why would they upgrade?